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Guerrilla Jukebox | 1 | review | compilation | Lollipop

Guerrilla Jukebox Vol. 1

(Tee Pee)
by Brian Varney

Label samplers are generally aimed at hooking folks who might not be familiar with a label's output, which is why I'm not really the best person to judge how good this is or isn't. I've got damn near every album sampled here, which I suppose speaks highly of Tee Pee's output cuz I'm a pretty picky motherfucker.

For those still totally in the dark, you've got 18 tracks taken from Tee Pee releases past, present, and future, nicely packaged and priced cheap. The first track is by jamtastic power trio Atomic Bitchwax, a band most famous for being the side project of Monster Magnet guitarist Ed Mundell. I've liked and grown tired of both Atomic Bitchwax releases, but they're pretty good a track or two at a time and this one, "Hey Alright," is probably the best song from their self-titled debut, so we're off to a good start. Other stuff liable to catch your ears includes Tricky Woo's fantastically catchy "Lonesome Road," which manages to be both funky and melodic, the slow, slide-greasy "Miss Delicious" from Raging Slab's 2002 highwater mark (Pronounced Eat Shit), the "most likely to cause a chipped tooth when you try to drink from a beer bottle while dancing" Southern-flavored classic rock of All Night's "Little Better," and Boulder's Blackfoot-by-way-of-Iron Maiden arena-set closer "Back for the Show."

Those are my favorites. Yours may be different, and since there is no conceptual glue holding this together other than to provide a truncated audio label resume, Guerrilla Jukebox lives and dies by the power of its songs, which I suppose is the way it should be. This isn't something I'll probably ever play again since, as I said, I own most of these albums. Hopefully, once you've heard this, you will too. Also includes Nebula, Bad Wizard, The High Strung, Mark D, Hermano, Black Nasa, Core, Sleep, The Mystick Krewe of Clearlight, Lost Goat, and High on Fire.
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